I sang (and played an occasional sax solo) with the wonderful Arabic ensemble, ASWAT . A SF choral group made up of a mix of Iraqi, Palestinian, and other Arabic-native singers and musicians, as well as gringos like me. I was always impressed with how welcoming everyone was, and that nobody suspected us of being CIA spies. Quite the opposite, a truly lovely bunch of people, and I can't describe how both fun and challenging the music is - temporally, melodically, temperamentally and linguistically. And fabulous musicians like Vince Delgado, Susu Pampanin and Devi Ja, all led by director Saed Muhssin.
This piece from our concert at Mills College: